Choosing a dehydrator -- Excalibur

[Guest guest]

rawfood , lisagribowski wrote:

> i've decided to buy the best... an excalibur 3000.

 

congratulations, lisa!

I bought an Excalibur 3526 (the 5 tray model with the timer) at the

end of last month.

It took me a while to get to it (I live in New York City -- we had to

plan a space and get a " holder " for it. At the end of the week that

it arrived, I got a cool kitchen rack with 4 shelves and a drawer for

$69 at one of the little Arab furniture stores on the block near my

house. My room-mate and I were able to walk it home on a luggage

carrier.)

At the end of last week, I tried a recipe from a book, but it did not

work very well (I have found that oil makes the drying time extend

forever) I tried the next day, " marinating " my vegetables for @15

minutes in water with spices, and got a fantastic batch of zucchini

and sweet potato chips.

Yesterday, I made crackers! Crackers were what had inspired my desire

to have a dehydrator -- I'd tried some at a New Age health fair, and,

as a low carb person, though they were just the ticket.

I sort of modified two recipes from Conscious Eating and Eating in the

Raw, and then prayed. I got nice crackers (which it is hard to keep

my room-mate away from) in 9 hours, and I know, now, what I will do

next time (if you are interested in knowing about my mis-steps, and

what I am doing to correct the issues I perceive, let me know)

I love the timer! It cuts off the machine at the time you say. That

is good if you need to go to sleep (although, of course, it is

worthless if you need to turn down the heat and you aren't there!)

 

there are lot of things they don't explain to you in the recipes...

for example: the recipes I read said to spread the flax seed

(marvelous stuff, BTW) 1/4 inch thick. I wanted THIN crackers, so I

spread and spread and spread (constantly filling in holes). My

crackers turned out paper-thin!!!! When you dehydrate, things shrink

lengthwise, widthwise, AND height-wise... 1/4 inch would have been

okay by me, but I LOVE my paper-thin crackers.

 

My next project will probably be crackers using only a little ground

flax seed.

After that, I will try crackers with no flax-seed and see what happens.

If you are curious, please post your questions, and I, or someone else

more experienced (hopefully), will tell you what to do.

 

BTW, those of you who are more experienced in crackers, and other

things, are welcome to submit recipes and caveats/advice/experience.

Margaret